Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola In 1978, notable director, Francis Ford Coppola, winner of four Academy Awards for his work on The Godfather, Parts I and II ''and Patton embarked on a legendary quest into the heart of the Phillipines to film his adaptation of Conrad's Heart of Darkness in his film ''Apocalypse Now. Borrowing from Conrad's novella, the most widely read short novel in the English language, and Michael Herr's Dispatches, Coppola and Millius produced an original script that placed man's encounter with his inner darkness into the heart of the Vietnam War. Despite being heavily over budget, problems with actors, and an unexpected war, Coppola's film offers a glimpse into the dark undercurrents of America's politics and ideology as it relates to our participation in Vietnam. When asked about his film, Coppola claims, "My film is Vietnam" (O'Nan). The film tracks U. S. Captain Williard, played by Martin Sheen, into the heart of Cambodia to execute a colonel of his own country, the declarated Walter E. Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando. Over the course of the quest, Willard must face his own brokenness, mirrored in the acts of his country against the "enemy." We follow Willard down the river, framed by a diversity of soldier types all crafted to draw us into the silent nobility and cautionary fearlessness of the executioner. His tale resembles Kurtz's own in that he too has violated his core for what he mistakingly believed was a higher purpose, only to find its worth illegitimate and corrupt. Tracking the fallen man is no new subject matter for Coppola, for he shaped Michael Corleone in The Godfather Trilogy as a man haunted by the Furies of his past guilt, choices, and self-seeking means. Utilizing strong juxtaposition, this director builds parallelism through characterization and narrative structure. Using interior and exterior frames, he isolates and surrounds his protagonists with that which they deplore showing how easy the boundary separating our light and darkness morphs at our will. This film, however, employs symbolic montage moments that mirror the stream of consciouness and delve deep into the psyche of the character. In 1991, Coppola released a documentary of his filming of Apocalypse Now'', '''called ''Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Taking a phenomenal 238 days to shoot, Coppola shares stories of Sheen's heart attack during filming, the surprise war that took their rented helicopters from their fictional battle to the real thing, and Coppola's own mortage of his house in Hollywood Hills just to finish the film that would give its audience "a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam war" (Malcom). For Coppola, the appeal of the film stems from its legenda ry chaos, intended to reflect the "surreal, drug-induced sensibility not that we were on drugs, but that was the sensibility" (Gordon). Surfers with weapons, influenced by the Doors, explored a different side of the age, the psyche where man trapped his anxiety, fear, and guilt from what came out of the war. When Dennis Hopper died in 2012, Devin Gordon interviewed Coppola on looking back at the film and it's mythic status. The director remarked, "I had one huge success when I was young, which was The Godfather, and absolutely every film after that was considered a failure of some kind or another." Clearly, to some Coppola's career peaked with his famed Godfather series, yet anyone who has experienced the third and final installment of that trilogy may disagree. The film remains one pocked with enigmatical symbolism, absolution and perdition, and a complexity of its own. Works Cited Gordon Hearts of Darkness: Filmmaker's Apocalypse Stewart O'Nan: The Vietnam Reader